Job 2:10 But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God… The attitude of Job toward life is at this point heroic, and his speech is one of the great heroic speeches of the world. We shall perhaps apprehend his thought better if for the words "good and evil" we substitute fortune and misfortune, happiness and sorrow. Happiness always seems good to us; sorrow always seems evil. Job has been happy beyond the average lot: fortune has attended him, things have gone well with him, and all that he has done has prospered. What is fortune? It is some nameless intangible force that sides with us, that puts what we want in our way, and that instructs us how to seize the opportunity of success; for the most egoistic of us is, after all, dimly conscious that many things happen to him without his seeking. What is misfortune? It is this same mysterious power ranged against us, and no longer our ally, but our enemy. Without any action on our part, any deviation from the righteousness and moral order of our lives, all things begin to be against us. If we had blasphemed and lost faith in rectitude, if we had been foolish, indolent, or vicious, we could understand it; but we have done and been none of these things. If Job could say, "I deserve this because I did so and so," it would greatly simplify the position; at all events, it would relieve the soul of that most intolerable of all suspicions, that God has blundered. But Job is too honest a man to admit a wrong he has not committed; simply because he is an upright man, he must be upright towards himself as well as towards God. So, then, he is driven to a diviner philosophy. Shall we receive happiness and fortune from the hands of God, and not sorrow and misfortune? Is it not the same power that makes things work for us, and work against us? Is there not something in the very order of life which ensures that every man has his just proportion of bitterness measured out to him, because without that tonic drop of bitterness in the cup the wine of life would corrupt by its own sweetness, and happiness become our worst disaster? That is the thought of Job, and it is a great and memorable thought. Now let us try to analyse this thought: not so much from the intellectual side as from the spiritual and the human. 1. The first thing that Job feels is that happiness and sorrow, fortune and misfortune, are equally of God; and simple as such a thought sounds, it is really the profoundest that the mind of man can conceive. To begin with, it puts an end to the popular conception of the devil, and to all those religious systems of theology which are based upon the antagonism of the Divine and the diabolical spirit. Thus, for example, the main doctrine in the religion of Persia is the presence of two great spirits in the world, the one of light, the other of darkness, who contend for the mastery of man and of the world. Man is seized by each in turn, is blessed and cursed, is comforted and menaced; for the good spirit does nothing but good, and the evil nothing but evil. Thus the world is ruled by a divided deity, and the one work of God is evermore to checkmate and undo the work of the devil. So far as English theology goes, John Milton and John Bunyan invented the devil between them; and their view of the world is practically the view of the Persian. But now turn to the Book of Job, and what do you find? In the great prologue to the drama, Satan appears indeed; but it is as the chained and impotent antagonist of God. He can do Job no harm without a Divine permission. The devil of Milton, who wages war against the Highest, and all but triumphs, would have been to the writer of this great drama an absolutely impious conception. The devil of the popular imagination, who torments man when God is not looking, and works evil in the world in spite of the goodness of God, would have been an equally impious and intolerable conception. Better were it to have no God than a God who reigns but does not govern; who does good as far as He can, but finds that good forever undone by a power of evil over whom He has no control. No, says Job, darkness and light both belong to God, and to Him the darkness is as the light. There is but one Ruler of the universe. 2. The second stage of Job's thought is, that it would be equally insensate and selfish to expect only fortune and happiness, and never sorrow or misfortune, in our lives. And why? Because misfortune happens to others, and we see that in some way or other sorrow is part of the human lot. Had Job never known searchings of heart on this very subject during the long day of his prosperity? Is there any man who can avoid sometimes wondering why things go so well with him and so ill with others? Does not the happy man sometimes feel as though he had cheated in the great game of life, and in escaping sorrow had evaded something of the burden of existence which all ought to bear according to their strength? We all remember the exquisite story of the renunciation of Buddha: how he sees the leper by the wayside, the old man tottering on the dusty road, the corpse carried out to burial, and asks, "Is life always like this?" and then goes back with sad eyes to his palace, and a voice in his soul which tells him he has no right to enjoy only when there is so much to endure. And we remember also how that thought worked in his gracious and tender heart until he felt that he could not fulfil his destiny unless he also sorrowed; that not to sorrow was not to share the true brotherhood of the world: and so he goes forth in the dead of night, and rides far and fast, till he comes to the forest solitude, where he puts aside his kingship and becomes only a man, a beggar with the beggar, an outcast with the outcast. It was so Chat Job felt in this first shock of his calamity. He had received good through such long years: should he complain now that he received evil? He had received good; let him now show that happiness had not corrupted him, by at least having the grace of gratitude, and learning to say with reverence and resignation, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." 3. One thing at least is certain, and it is a thing that Job deeply feels in this hour: that whatever part happiness may play in our lives, sorrow is necessary for us, as a factor in our moral development. Let us be sure of it — it does not do for us to be too happy. Few of us can carry the full cup without spilling it. Even those who have the finest natural endowment of tenderness and sentiment are apt to grow proud, hard, callous, indifferent to suffering, careless of the deeper poetry of life and the higher visions of the spirit,, when happiness knows no admixture of sorrow. But who has not felt his heart strangely softened in the hour of loss? Who has not found himself looking on the world with gentler and more pitiful glances after having looked into the eves of death? The evidence of this real need of sorrow in human life is seen in the fact that all the great lives of the world have been the tried lives. The names that thrill us, the histories that inspire our virtue, the episodes of heroism that gladden us and exalt us, are all linked in some way with suffering. There is, in fact, nothing in mere happiness that is exalting or inspiring. There is no more uninteresting person in the world than the person who has uniformly succeeded in life. We would rather have died with Gordon in the Soudan than have made a fortune out of nitrates; have done the work that Livingstone or Moffat did, than have "fed on the lilies and lain on the roses" of life with the luckiest millionaire who never knew a want unsatisfied or a calamity that could not be averted. Some acquaintance with sorrow is absolutely necessary to modify the corrupting effect of too uniform a happiness. The great lives have usually been lives that were greatly tried, and herein is their fascination; the greatest men have always been those who know the use of sorrow, and have learned to say: What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? Do we find it hard to say this? Do we who call ourselves Christians find it hard? I do not say that it is, or ever can be, easy; but if we are indeed Christians we shall not fail in grace to say it, For what commentary on the words of Job is there so penetrating or complete as the story of Jesus? With a consciousness of perfect integrity, such as not even Job could hope to emulate, He never murmured under the worst stroke of calamity. He turned His back to the smiter, and was, as a lamb before her shearers, dumb. And His one word amid it all is an even grander word than Job's; it is — "Father, not My will, but Thine be done." And finally, in the very spirit of Job, He accuses no evil power of malice, but sees in all the tragedy something permitted by God for His own supreme and blessed ends, and knows that through the evil of men God's purpose will be done, and God's goodness find a final and complete vindication. 4. I notice, finally, then, that there are two kinds of peace possible to us: the peace of fact, and the peace of principle, The peace of fact is but another phrase for stoicism. It is in a sense the peace of nature: the natural stubborn elements in us which collect and harden themselves under misfortune, and refuse to yield. In all ages of the world this kind of peace has been possible to men. It is always possible for us to train ourselves in silence, in mute resistance to the stroke of fate, and to resist endlessly. But the higher peace is the peace of principle, and this is the peace of Christ. It is not negative, but positive. The peace of fact is the peace of Prometheus under the unjust wrath of Heaven; the peace of principle is the peace of Job, in the sense that God is good. It, is sustained by our faith in certain principles and supreme truths, the chief of which is the unbounded goodness and unerring wisdom of God. It is the peace of conquest; the peace of inner vision; the peace of justified and resolute hope. (W. J. Dawson.) Parallel Verses KJV: But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips. |
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